Dice! (Another scrap wood project)

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Stephen had another piece of scrap 6×6 wood that I was eyeing. It was too short to do much with, so he said it was all mine. Whoop! I googled some ideas, and really loved the look of jumbo dice. I could make two 6x6x6 cube dice out of the wood I had, which was perfect.

I started off by measuring where to cut. A 6×6 piece of wood is actually 5.5″ x 5.5″, so I measured out to 5.5″ twice and made marks.

Stephen helped me again with the cuts, since this wood is so thick! It took sawing down halfway, then flipping the wood over and sawing the other side until the cuts meet.

The cuts weren’t totally perfect, since we had to flip it over to finish the cut- there always seems to be millimeter differences in the wood from the cut.

I took out the electric sander and used the lower-grit sandpaper (which allows for deeper sanding) and did a quick sand to try to smooth the wood out.

Now, I have my two smooth cubes to go paint!

I chose a really cool blue chalk paint to use: The Spruce Best Home Chalk Paint in Casual Sophistication. If it looks familiar, this is what I used on our garage entry door!

I painted two coats on the cubes and let them dry. Chalk paint dries incredibly fast, which is very refreshing. Lately, with other projects, I’ve been stuck in “stain land”, which takes FOREVER to dry!

For the dots on the dice, I went to my Cricut machine and cut out 42, 1.2 inch diameter circle stickers. Did you know there are 21 dots on each die? Useless knowledge that might pop up at a Trivia Night sometime. 😉 You definitely don’t have to have a vinyl cutting machine, though… acrylic paint and something to trace circles with would be perfectly fine!

I actually had to look up where exactly each number went on each die. Google, who is one of my best companions, saved the day, as usual! I was able to place the dots in the right positions on the cubes.

These stickers are not crazy sticky, though, so I pulled out the polyurethane. The poly will keep the stickers in place (it’s almost like a clear glue) and will also protect the paint!

Here is the final product!

Unless we’re playing some kind of jumbo Monopoly game, these will just be for shelf decorations… but I think they’re a little something different and fun! And they were FREE, with just stuff we already had on hand!